2016 Minnesota Archives Symposium Call for Panelists

The Twin Cities Archives Round Table is pleased to announce the fifth annual Minnesota Archives Symposium (MAS). MAS is a local educational and networking opportunity opportunity for archivists, librarians, records managers, curators and other information professionals. We seek to broaden opportunities to share knowledge and insights among peers at a local level. The Symposium will be held on Monday, November 14th at the Elmer L. Andersen Library at the University of Minnesota.

This year’s topic will be: Archives in Conversation

Archivists today have a lot to talk about. From finding funding for our increasingly complex projects, to the challenges of born-digital records, to bringing our collections to new audiences, conversations about important issues are happening at every level of our profession, across different types of repositories and institutions. This year at the Minnesota Archives Symposium we will forego a singular theme, and instead focus on conversations. We will host panels around several topics of interest to our profession, encouraging panelists from different institutions to talk about their struggles and solutions surrounding similar issues. Learn from the experiences of your colleagues, and join the conversation!

Call for Participants:

We envision having five panels of speakers. The proposed panels are as follows:

1. Engagement — How do you bring in new audiences? Do you digitize materials, create events, work for partnerships? How do you promote diversity and engage a diverse audience? What strategies have worked for you? What have you learned through developing these projects?
2. Grants  — Whether it be Minnesota Legacy Grants, NEH Grants, local or online  resources for grant writing, we all deal with writing or desiring grants. What are some methods that you have found work well for writing and receiving grants?
3. Lone Arranger — Surviving when you’re the lone archivist can be a challenge. How do you provide outreach on a budget, develop partnerships with other cultural institutions, and garner support for the archives within your institution?
4. Born-Digital Materials — Digital materials, and especially born-digital materials, remain a challenge for many archivists and institutions. Have you worked successfully with them? Do you have a showcase of tools and resources that you find helpful or a basic how-to guide? What are your processes for capturing born-digital items?
5. Young Professionals — Whether you yourself are a young professional or you supervise new archivists — how do you find success as a newly minted archivist? How do you provide volunteer or internship opportunities to future information professionals? Any tips for managing students or volunteers?

We are hoping for 2-5 speakers per panel, meaning you should be comfortable speaking anywhere from 5 to 20 minutes. Once we have panelists for each topic, we will put you in contact with each other. At that point your group can decide how to divide your hour time slot.

Interested in creating a panel conversation that isn’t represented here? Let us know!

Details for Participating:

• If you are interested in volunteering to be on a panel, please fill out the spreadsheet located here. (Note that there is one tab per suggested panel.) Want to see who has already volunteered to get an idea of if you want to join in? Take a look! We encourage you to throw ideas out there and get conversations started.
• Please include a brief description of what you could bring to the panel. Include full contact information with submissions, including your name(s) and institution or school if applicable.

Deadline for submission is Friday, September 2nd.

Registration:

Save the Date!!! The Minnesota Archives Symposium will be held at the Elmer L. Andersen Library at the University of Minnesota on Monday, November 14th. Registration is FREE, but we will ask that participants register their intent to attend soon. Look for more details on registering for this event on the TCART listserv and website.

Questions?

Questions should be sent to the TCART Communications Officer Kate Dietrick at diet0134@umn.edu or 612-625-0192.